I find 865PE is a great compatibility option for late 98SE builds if you want Intel and/or don't want to splurge for A64. It's plenty powerful and even strong enough for a decent bit into the XP range. Intel's drivers I find much more reliable and stable than SIS or VIA. nForce is a good choice as well up until the nF4 then it gets bad.

Im using an Asus P4P800-VM (mATX board) with a 3.0 800fsb P4 in mine. It has SATA, USB 2.0, and works with a modern PSU. Running both 98SE and XP SP3 with an x850 Pro. It's been a rock solid board (aside from usual bad ati driver stuff) and everything just works without hassles, even USB 2.0 support in 98SE. However, I can't speak much on the onboard sound as I'm using a SB Live. I believe the full ATX version is just the P4P800 - they aren't that cheap normally but you can find some pretty nice deals if you're patient.

I had a second build with a SIS 651 based chipset, it had some issues in 98SE getting USB support working and it would crash at least once a day. XP had no problems, it was like 98SE was an 'afterthought'. I ended up selling it cheaply to a friend who wanted an early XP rig and just dual booting my 865PE build.

As for Athlon XP, I had one in the day and they're amazing performers for their time but today I can't recommend them for someone who just wants a cheap build to play games. Their extremely high +5 requirement makes PSU choice very limited and it's all old stuff.

If all you want is 98SE for earlier stuff and really don't care much for late performance, you could prob be fine with socket 370/early 462/slot A. A coppermine P3 build would also be decently cheap and run pretty well for most 98SE stuff aside from maybe the very latest 3D. I'm not too sure on the PSU requirements though as someone else would have to chime in there, never had one. Went from K6-2 to a Socket A build back then, 🤣.

I never liked XPs for the lack of silent coolers, can go wrong installing it and chip the die killing the cpu.
PSU difficult.

I'd go for a P4 or 754.
Personally I'd go with a 754.

Best advice is pick a board 1st and hold off any assumptions until then.

Rincewind42 wrote on 2022-08-22, 11:36:

I guess the onboard audio will be fine for gaming,

It's really subjective, depends on the onboard solution. It's better to pick out a board 1st than to guess about it. Then you can look and see if it's good enough.

Rincewind42 wrote on 2022-08-22, 11:36:

I used to have a Matrox back in the day because I've always prioritized image quality and quiet operation to performance

A Matrox G400 Max is a respectable direct X6 card, Id go with that one if you've already made up your mind.

Rincewind42 wrote on 2022-08-22, 11:36:

So based on my requirements and what I've read in the forum so far, it seems that it's best to forget about the Socket A stuff altogether

There's a lot of conflicted opinions about that, I wouldn't disregard the positive arguments just because of PSU requirements. [/quote]

Rincewind42 wrote on 2022-08-22, 11:36:

I'm guessing 256 Mb of RAM would be plenty

256 of ram is plenty, but anything between 256 and 512 would probably be the sweet spot.

I'm fond of s462. Low (sub-40W) TDP CPUs with something like a Geforce MX which is perfectly adequate for your needs aren't overly difficult for modern PSUs either (https://youtu.be/efK7mw8eYiE). There are also motherboards with 4pin 12V supplementary power connector (ABIT NF7 variants, Asus A7V8X-LA, Gigabyte GA-7NNXP, MSI KM3M-V, MSI KM4M-V, MSI KT6V). I'm running one myself too with a 70W Athlon XP 2800+.

SiS, VIA or Intel. Not sure about nforce2 and 98SE. nforce3 is a no-no, but is great XP chipset.
I would also recommend i865PE.

Thanks for all the input, guys. Well, the objective here is to take advantage of this opportunity to get a few of these boards at quite low prices (the 3 boards with CPU and RAM would cost me around 40 AUD), so I think I'll get these:

Socket 478

• Gigabyte GA-8SRX P4 Titan (ATX, SiS 645/961, 1xAGP 4x, 6xPCI, onboard audio)

Socket 754

• ABit NF8-V (ATX, NVIDIA nForce3 250Gb, 1xAGP 8x, 5xPCI, onboard audio, USB2.0)
• Gigabyte K8-VM800M (micro-ATX, VIA K8M800/VT8237, 1xAGP 8x (1.5V only), 3xPCI, Realtek onboard audio, USB2.0)

I think I'll focus on a P4 build for now, that Gigabyte GA-8SRX P4 Titan was recently re-capped and fully tested, according to the guy, and it's a top-of-the-line board.

Yeah I'll try the onboard audio first, but I guess I'll need an SB Live for EAX. I remember back in the day quite a few games made good use of the SB Live's built-in reverb, that was kinda cool, and it turns all Infinity Engine games support EAX (Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, etc.), so I definitely want that.

Chipset question... I don't think I ever had a board with an Intel chipset in the early 2000s and I don't remember any serious problems nor any stability issues, so I'll try my luck. In any case, these Gigabyte and Abit boards seems quite solid based on the information I found online.

For the gfx card I could get a Matrox G450 relatively cheaply or a TNT2. The other benefit is that these use passive cooling, and the Matrox at least has very nice image quality (not sure about the TNT2, although I had one 20 years ago, so should remember...) Don't really want a Geforce because most of them have fans and the image quality is supposedly quite bad...

Any specific P4 or Athlon64 CPU recommendations, something I should be looking for? (main goal here is quiet operation, like I mentioned)

Rincewind42 wrote on 2022-08-23, 13:15:

Don't really want a Geforce because most of them have fans and the image quality is supposedly quite bad...

I understand the fan requirement, but where did you get information that Geforce image quality is bad? In what way?

I know you said you don't want an overpowered rig but its likely that a more powerful card might simply be cheaper than older cards, and if you're not worried about period accuracy why not go with cheap and available. Besides those fans are not going to be that loud, in a period case i doubt you would even notice them.

Rincewind42 wrote on 2022-08-23, 13:15:

[...]

For the gfx card I could get a Matrox G450 relatively cheaply or a TNT2. The other benefit is that these use passive cooling, and the Matrox at least has very nice image quality (not sure about the TNT2, although I had one 20 years ago, so should remember...) Don't really want a Geforce because most of them have fans and the image quality is supposedly quite bad...

What sort of monitor are you using?

If it's a TFT, you want DVI, not VGA in any event. The Matrox G550 would be a better choice then - similar feature set and performance to the 400MAX (the G450 is MUCH slower). Or just a GeForce 4 of some variety or other. 0 difference in image quality over digital connection.
If a CRT using analog VGA, then yes, few cards surpass the G450, but it's still a slug, and a most decent-brand GeForce cards were in the same ballpark. Only cheap no-name crap looked like a 1990s S3 card, for exactly the same reason.

Any specific P4 or Athlon64 CPU recommendations, something I should be looking for? (main goal here is quiet operation, like I mentioned)

Look for TDP. Choose lowest. In P4 terms that would point to a low-end P4 Northwood.

If you don't care about speed but do about noise, then that's the way to go - the less heat a CPU generates, the less the cooling needs to dissipate. That said, your choice of HSF is far more relevant, a good quiet one can easily keep a hot CPU cool enough without making you deaf, a bad one will let the coolest CPU overheat and do your ears in while it's at it. For So478 and So754, you're dependent on whatever old stuff you can find, so it's more a question of seeing what's available and then choosing the best match. I like Zalman, Arctic Cooling and Scythe as default 'quiet' brands, but you still need to look per individual model to be sure.

Image quality issues were manufacturer dependent and by the time of Geforce2 it was pretty much dealt with. Geforce MX200, MX400 and MX440 are all just as cheap as the G550 if not cheaper and even the slowest one is >50% faster. And still no one would accuse a Geforce MX of being overpowered. You can also get them all with passive cooling.

Shagittarius wrote on 2022-08-23, 14:56:

I understand the fan requirement, but where did you get information that Geforce image quality is bad? In what way?

From this forum. Quite a few people claim that few cards surpass the image quality of the Matrox's VGA output. I'm pretty sure what they mean is the sharpness of the image, and perhaps texture filtering quality as well?

dionb wrote on 2022-08-23, 15:56:

What sort of monitor are you using?
If a CRT using analog VGA, then yes, few cards surpass the G450, but it's still a slug, and a most decent-brand GeForce cards were in the same ballpark. Only cheap no-name crap looked like a 1990s S3 card, for exactly the same reason.

I'm a bit obsessed with CRTs, so I don't use anything else with my retro machines. For the Win98 era stuff I'm intending to use a 17" ViewSonic E70, so quite nice, but I have a couple of other spare 17" displays. The games I'm intending to play are mostly 640x480 or 800x600 resolution and 2D, so it matters that the image is nice and sharp, especially because there's a lot of text in these games. I used Matrox cards for nearly 10 years with CRTs back in the day, that's my baseline for 2D image quality. However, if the GeForce 2 cards can 80-90% match that, that's probably good enough.

dionb wrote on 2022-08-23, 15:56:

Look for TDP. Choose lowest. In P4 terms that would point to a low-end P4 Northwood.

If you don't care about speed but do about noise, then that's the way to go - the less heat a CPU generates, the less the cooling needs to dissipate. That said, your choice of HSF is far more relevant, a good quiet one can easily keep a hot CPU cool enough without making you deaf, a bad one will let the coolest CPU overheat and do your ears in while it's at it. For So478 and So754, you're dependent on whatever old stuff you can find, so it's more a question of seeing what's available and then choosing the best match. I like Zalman, Arctic Cooling and Scythe as default 'quiet' brands, but you still need to look per individual model to be sure.

Yeah I used to have a Scythe Ninja (I think?) in my passively cooled Core 2 Duo. I'll have a look at the TDP numbers, that's a good idea, but yeah it depends on what this particular guy has in stock (he just throws in some P4/A64 CPUs for $5 each, so I guess I should be happy with whatever I can get).

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-08-23, 16:27:

Image quality issues were manufacturer dependent and by the time of Geforce2 it was pretty much dealt with. Geforce MX200, MX400 and MX440 are all just as cheap as the G550 if not cheaper and even the slowest one is >50% faster. And still no one would accuse a Geforce MX of being overpowered. You can also get them all with passive cooling.

That's true, now I checked out the GeForce 2 cards of a seller in my area, and indeed, they're a bunch of passively cooled ones and they cost about the same as the G450.

Any particular brands to look for that you guys can recommend? Unfortunately I don't think I'll have the opportunity to try them, I'll need to buy it blind.

Here's an ASUS:
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/284503787791

Palit Daytone Gold:
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/284504634126

Gainward:
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/284727431367

And some other unknown brands:
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/284671876243
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/284502606362

Rincewind42 wrote on 2022-08-23, 17:08:

[[...]

From this forum. Quite a few people claim that few cards surpass the image quality of the Matrox's VGA output. I'm pretty sure what they mean is the sharpness of the image, and perhaps texture filtering quality as well?

No, if it's Matrox, it's about analog filters & circuitry.

I'm a bit obsessed with CRTs, so I don't use anything else with my retro machines. For the Win98 era stuff I'm intending to use a 17" ViewSonic E70, so quite nice, but I have a couple of other spare 17" displays. The games I'm intending to play are mostly 640x480 or 800x600 resolution and 2D, so it matters that the image is nice and sharp, especially because there's a lot of text in these games.

At those resolutions it hardly matters, you only really start to see differences at higher resolutions. I had a Sony w900 24" widescreeen CRT, and liked to run it at 1600x900 resolution. There I *really* noticed the difference between my G450 and say a crappy GeForce 2MX. But at 1024x768 you need a very bad card to tell the difference, and at 640x480 anything that's not downright broken or providing wrong voltage levels (crappy S3 cards) will look the same.

I used Matrox cards for nearly 10 years with CRTs back in the day, that's my baseline for 2D image quality. However, if the GeForce 2 cards can 80-90% match that, that's probably good enough.

At 640x480 and 800x600? Sure.

But... this is a pile of low-end cards, Gf2MX, not Gf2 GTS. I would generally suggest that Gf4Ti is about the ideal AGP card, as it's powerful, generally cards with it were very good quality, including for analog stuff (I did actually upgrade to a Leadtek Gf4Ti4200 with that w900 and found it acceptable), while still keeping excellent DOS VESA compatibility, and being less hot, so quieter, than the higher-end GeForce FX cards. But for your purposes any good Gf2 GTS, Gf3 (of any description) or Gf4TI would probably do the trick.

If you had to choose one of those cheapo Gf2MX cards, I'd say the Gainward is the best, as the rest are really cut down.

That's true, now I checked out the GeForce 2 cards of a seller in my area, and indeed, they're a bunch of passively cooled ones and they cost about the same as the G450.

Any particular brands to look for that you guys can recommend? Unfortunately I don't think I'll have the opportunity to try them, I'll need to buy it blind.

Abit, Asus, Gainward, Leadtek - maybe AOpen, Creative and MSI too. But whichever brand, as with the coolers, look at the models. Really low-end ones (like those Gf2MXs you linkt to) might wel disappoint. Also watch for bad caps (Leadtek and MSI are particularly bad for that, but always keep an eye open). You don't need to go crazy on the most expensive premium cards (GeForce3Ti500, GeForce4Ti4600/4800-8X), anything not clearly budget will be fine.

Thanks a lot for the detailed reply, much appreciated. There's ton of useful advice there; it seems it would be best if I went with a later GeForce card that still has good compatibility with early games (fog table and 8-bit texture support can be an issue, as I've recently learned).

dionb wrote on 2022-08-23, 22:30:

But for your purposes any good Gf2 GTS, Gf3 (of any description) or Gf4TI would probably do the trick.

Regarding that advice, one last question if you don't mind (and then I'll leave you alone as you've helped a lot already): the guy has lots of passively cooled GeForce 4 MX440 and GeForce FX 5200 boards for the same low price as the MX200 boards. Based on what I've read on the Vogons wiki, these would be vastly superior in terms of performance to the MX200 and any Matrox board, while still having 8-bit texture and fog table support (e.g. I really want to be able to run Thief II with proper fog support). Do you think one of these would be a good choice for my requirements? Thanks!

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/284727448935
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/284727449541
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/284727450965
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/284647171003
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/284727447734
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/284734096456

Rincewind42 wrote on 2022-08-24, 01:30:

Based on what I've read on the Vogons wiki, these would be vastly superior in terms of performance to the MX200 and any Matrox board, while still having 8-bit texture and fog table support (e.g. I really want to be able to run Thief II with proper fog support). Do you think one of these would be a good choice for my requirements? Thanks!

While Nvidia GeForce cards up to (and including) the FX series do support both table fog and paletted textures, they have another issue with regards to Thief II, unrelated to the aforementioned features. Any Nvidia card newer than a TNT2 will not correctly render the stars in the night sky.

In comparison, Matrox G4xx cards will properly render both the fog and the stars in Thief II. They do lack paletted texture support though, which might matter if you want to play Final Fantasy 7 or 8 on that system.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-08-24, 01:45:

While Nvidia GeForce cards up to (and including) the FX series do support both table fog and paletted textures, they have another issue with regards to Thief II, unrelated to the aforementioned features. Any Nvidia card newer than a TNT2 will not correctly render the stars in the night sky.

In comparison, Matrox G4xx cards will properly render both the fog and the stars in Thief II. They do lack paletted texture support though, which might matter if you want to play Final Fantasy 7 or 8 on that system.

Well, you just never can win, can you? 😀 I've perused your investigations about fog & paletted texture support, great stuff, very informative. (Re-)playing the Thief series and FF 7-8 are definitely on my list, so overall I think the GeForce4 MX440 would be the best choice. When playing Thief II I can just imagine it's a cloudy night, so no big deal I guess... 😀

Found this on the Wiki:

"One problem with NVIDIA cards prior to GeForce4 is that some card vendors built their cards too cheaply. The most noticeable result is poor analog signal quality. It causes problems such as blurriness, loss of color saturation and color bleed, particularly at higher resolutions and refresh rates. Determining which cards are high quality is difficult but the GeForce4 and newer cards are most likely to be good."

So it seems that the analog output quality will be fine on the MX440, especially because I don't really care about resolutions higher than 800x600.

Rincewind42 wrote on 2022-08-24, 05:15:

Well, you just never can win, can you? 😀 I've perused your investigations about fog & paletted texture support, great stuff, very informative. (Re-)playing the Thief series and FF 7-8 are definitely on my list, so overall I think the GeForce4 MX440 would be the best choice. When playing Thief II I can just imagine it's a cloudy night, so no big deal I guess... 😀

Technically, you would get the best results on a Voodoo 3 (and higher) since those cards provide all of the legacy features and also have a "22-bit" filter which makes games that only support 16-bit colors (like Thief and System Shock 2) look slightly nicer. Phil recently made a video showcasing this and another one which goes into more detail on what each driver setting does.

Voodoo 3 cards also have excellent image quality, but unfortunately their current prices are way too high. I gather PowerVR Kyro cards are the next best thing for 16-bit color gaming, but I haven't personally tested one of those.

That said, with regards to the price/performance ratio, it's hard to beat an MX440 card.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-08-24, 06:36:

Technically, you would get the best results on a Voodoo 3 (and higher) since those cards provide all of the legacy features and also have a "22-bit" filter which makes games that only support 16-bit colors (like Thief and System Shock 2) look slightly nicer. Phil recently made a video showcasing this and another one which goes into more detail on what each driver setting does.

Hey, that's good to know that there's at least one such card that ticks all the boxes! I see it's passively cooled too, that's great.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-08-24, 06:36:

Voodoo 3 cards also have excellent image quality, but unfortunately their current prices are way too high. I gather PowerVR Kyro cards are the next best thing for 16-bit color gaming, but I haven't personally tested one of those.

Yeah, just did a quick search and they're ranging from $250 to $350. Umm... no thanks. I'm a quite budget-minded person and like to find the sweet spot; not really into the diminishing returns business where you pay like 10x more for a 10-20% difference. I can just imagine it's a cloudy night in Thief II, that will do 😀

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-08-24, 06:36:

That said, with regards to the price/performance ratio, it's hard to beat an MX440 card.

Came to the same conclusion myself, and there's not much to lose by buying one of these $30-$35 cards. Thanks for all the tips, it was all very helpful and educational!

I would vote for Athlon XP (Barton). They are very cheap and late boards have 12V 4pin connector and SATA. They are ridiculously overpowered in Windows 98. PIII would be a more period correct choice.

Some VIA Socket 754 boards have unresolved AGP driver problems in Windows 98. Avoid socket 754 for Windows 98 until it is resolved. See Not Another Ultimate Windows 98 Build

FYI my PIII 900E can handle even Fifa 2003, Nhl 2003, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Solder of Fortune. Anything above 1Ghz is overpowered for Windows 98. These early games don't have sufficiently detailed textures to justify high resolutions.

AlexZ wrote on 2022-08-24, 13:20:

I would vote for Athlon XP (Barton). They are very cheap and late boards have 12V 4pin connector and SATA. They are ridiculously overpowered in Windows 98. PIII would be a more period correct choice.

I want to stay away from Socket A stuff because of the 5V rail problem. Plus this whole thing started out as an experiment in what can I do with these cheap $5 boards. I can get any of them for about $15 with CPU and RAM, that's not too bad. That P4 Gigabyte board is very nice and it has been recapped, so I think I will focus on just doing a cheap-and-cheerful P4 build with a modern PSU, maybe the guy even has some Northwood P4 CPUs. But if I had to start from scratch, I'd look into building a P3 or P4 rig, I'm quite certain.

AlexZ wrote on 2022-08-24, 13:20:

Some VIA Socket 754 boards have unresolved AGP driver problems in Windows 98. Avoid socket 754 for Windows 98 until it is resolved. See Not Another Ultimate Windows 98 Build

Good to know, I went through that thread and it has really discouraged me from going down the Socket 754 route, at least for the Win98SE machine. Thanks for the tip!

I'll still get those S754 board if I ever want to do an XP build, they're worth $5 bucks each.

Rincewind42 wrote on 2022-08-24, 05:15:

Found this on the Wiki:

"One problem with NVIDIA cards prior to GeForce4 is that some card vendors built their cards too cheaply. The most noticeable result is poor analog signal quality. It causes problems such as blurriness, loss of color saturation and color bleed, particularly at higher resolutions and refresh rates. Determining which cards are high quality is difficult but the GeForce4 and newer cards are most likely to be good."

Isn't poor imagine quality part of the retro experience? 😁

I had a Voodoo 5, so I never experienced it, but I remember Geforce owners talking about it in forums and reviews notoriously mentioned it.

Some Geforce 2s had DVI ports on them. I suppose that's one way to avoid the problem.